Hu-Man and Robin

I have a funny story to tell about a Robin building its nest. Our swingset has a rock wall attached, and over several days we started noticing little bits of straw and grass and any sort of nesting material building up on the rocks. My husband would go out and take all the stuff off and get rid of it thinking the bird would stop because of the human scent. Finally one morning we noticed that there was a nest actually built up on a beam under the canopy of the swing set. The bird had the whole nest built except for the floor. I told my husband to go out and get rid of it before the bird came back. As my husband was up on the climber, I saw a Robin land in the tree not too far from the set, with his beak full of straw, and his head cocked to the side eyeballing my husband. I was standing safely inside the house looking out of the window and yelling to my husband that I think I see the bird responsible for building the nest. My husband looks over at the tree and tries to hurry taking down the nest. All the while I was teasing him from the window saying the bird was probably thinking "I just spent the better part of this morning building this nest and all I have to do is lay down my floor. Now this human is messing up my work. My wife is nagging me about being big and pregnant and needing to lay these eggs somewhere..." and as I was saying this I looked over and the bird started to nose dive towards my husband on the swing set. Now this platform is 5 feet tall so my husband could only escape by climbing down the rock wall, climbing down the ladder, or going down the slide. So, realizing this, I'm screaming "Oh my goodness! It's coming after you! Get down he's going to try to bite you!" My husband started to get a little concerned because his hysterical wife is screaming at him and he sees a bird coming to attack him. For whatever reason the birds just flew after him but didn't actually try to do anything to him. He just landed on the fence behind the swing set. My husband got down unscathed. Once I realized he was okay I could not stop laughing. I have not laughed that hard in a very long time. For sometime after that the bird just hopped around looking for the nest and after a while a friend of his joined him. So I started ad-libbing for them "What were you doing last night Rob? You don't remember where you left your nest?" "No seriously man, I know it was right here but this big human came and took it away, I even tried to get him but he was pretty fast for human." (Because even birds embellish stories).

I think this is the bird. It keeps coming back to this tree and looking at us while we're outside.  Look at the first picture. Doesn't he look like he's looking at me?

Ahh...Spring :)

How to Get Rid of Ants Naturally

Sometime in the past I know I wrote something about our ridiculous ant issues. I hate ants because they are wrecking havoc on my yard. When we were going to lay down mulch for our swing set, we noticed a little ant hill by the leg of the set. We were trying to figure out how to get rid of it without the use of chemicals. We took the handle of a shovel and poked deep holes in the mound. Then we filled it half way with baking soda, and the rest with vinegar. I think it killed some of the ants, but not all. In the past I have used boiling water on the hills, and that has worked really well, but you need a lot of water and you need to make it outside without sloshing water on yourself. My other trick has been cinnamon. Cinnamon doesn't kill the ants, but the don't like it, so they should leave the yard. I did this in my front yard, and they left, but my neighbor treats his yard with something, so they didn't go there. Guess where the went? That's right, my backyard. Now I have been trying to get rid of these annoying creatures ever since.

They haven't bothered me too much in the last couple of years because I wasn't spending a lot of time in the backyard, but now we are going outside every day and I refuse to have these pesky things crawling all over my family. I remembered reading something about ants not liking citrus, so I had a new plan of action.

I bought some oranges the other day and since they are no longer in season, the inside tasted just about as delicious as the peel. So I thought I'd go ahead and give this citrus thing a try. Instead of just using orange peel, I decided to add some cinnamon too...why not?

After I grated two oranges, I sprinkled it over the area that saw all of those nasty buggers. It actually covered a pretty large area for just two oranges. I wish that I had gotten a video of the ants trying to get away. There were so many ants, the mulch looked like it was moving. Within about 10 minutes, there wasn't an ant to be seen. AMAZING!

 

After realizing I missed the opportunity to capture the power of citrus and cinnamon on camera, I was on the lookout for ants. I finally found one on the slide. I didn't have enough oranges to spread over the entire area of mulch, but I did have enough cinnamon, so it got sprinkled everywhere. I think this ant was trying to escape the cinnamon, so he decided to use the slide as his escape route.

Here he is...happy as a clam. 

So I did the first thing that came to mind...I sprinkled him with cinnamon. He didn't know what to do!

In this picture he thought he had it figured out. When I originally sprinkled the slide with cinnamon, he just went up the side to try to climb over. That's when I did a mega sprinkle which created this awesome border of cinnamon. Look at how he's looking at it. This ant went back and forth, around and around. He never figured out how to escape. Finally a strong gust of wind came along and blew him off, only for him to land in more cinnamon on the ground.

I have to say I was pretty happy to see these horrible critters running away because that is what I have been doing with these stupid ant hills that I keep finding.

Now I'm going to go to the store and buy up all of their oranges and take turns with my mom and my husband grating up the biggest batch of ant repellant ever. I'm also going to buy more cinnamon, and sprinkle that stuff everywhere, and let the ants know they are no longer welcome.  As an added bonus, my yard will smell awesome!

I am going to have to put down ant traps too, because there are just too many ants. They take the stuff back to the queen and it kills them. But after that, I'm hoping my homemade concotion keeps them away. We'll see...

Rainbow Swing Set

In January we decided it was time to get a bigger play-set for our kids. The one that we had was a Step 2 set that we bought for our first child when she was 18 months. It had two swings and was great for her at the time, but when our new babies were born we decided we needed to get a new one because the Step 2 was now too small for our family.

We decided to go check out the Rainbow swing sets. Apparently they have closeout sales, so we got a great deal. We wanted it installed before Easter but we had to wait until temperatures were above 40°  for them to come out and install it. We also had a lot of other things that needed to be done before this new swing set arrived. We had to call someone out to cut down two trees from our backyard, as well as remove a limb from our neighbors huge cottonwood tree. We had two days of warm weather, so the first day we had our trees cut down, and the next day the swing set was installed. The kids were so excited to play on it so we let them play for a few minutes before it got dark and told them that they would probably be able to go out and play on it again the next day. Unfortunately, we couldn't seem to shake winter and it was a while before they were able to actually enjoy it.

While I was waiting for the weather to warm up, I spent hours online researching what was the proper type of material to use under a swing set for safety. I looked at pea gravel, rubber mulch, wood mulch, and wood chips. In the end we decided to go with wood mulch. There were pros and cons to each of the different materials, for example, the rubber mulch seemed great because it was a very nice landing pad from any sort of high place,  but I was concerned about any odor that it would emit over time, I was concerned about chemicals leaching  into the soil, and I was concerned about how hot it would get on a typical summer day, not to mention it was the most expensive choice.  My next choice was pea gravel. I thought this was a great idea because not only was it a safe landing zone, but my kids could  play in it sort of like sand without being a giant litter box for any neighborhood cats. I nixed this idea when I realized I needed about 9 inches of pea gravel which worked out to be something like 20 tons. I don't remember exactly how many tons, so 20 may be a bit much but it was definitely more than 10. My husband and I would have to lay all of it down wheelbarrow load  by wheelbarrow load, which didn't sound fun for anyone.  Also, if we ever move from this house we probably would have to remove it for the next owner which is not something we want to deal with. Our last two choices were woodchips or wood mulch. We decided to go with mulch because it seems to be a little more pleasant to land on if someone falls.

So now the weather is nice, the swing set is up, the mulch is laid down, and the edging is finally finished. But now we have a new problem...ants!

Where have I been?

Okay so where have I been since October?  Honestly I haven't been doing anything particularly interesting. I contemplated starting another blog because unfortunately my sister in law is no longer able to post due to the fact that she is busy with four out of five kids in school :) I'm not going to start a new blog because honestly I don't feel like starting over. I'm pretty sure I could just copy everything over, but I'd like to just keep going with this one. So from now on its just me, a home made sister I suppose :)

When I originally came up with the idea of starting a blog, I wanted to talk about things related to motherhood and all of the funny and interesting things that go along with raising kids, specifically as a stay at home mom. However, that never really happened, it turned into me posting about food and my sewing endeavors. I have decided that now I'm going to write about all of my endeavors, just in case there is someone out there like me who is wondering about something, or is thinking about trying something new and wants to find out if someone else has tried it too. I also plan to include stories of everyday life that might bring a smile to your face if you are having a bad day.

This year I plan on getting back on track with things because over the past two years I was either pregnant, or trying to get newborns to sleep through the night. I was also feeling a sense of accomplishment because I got through the "terrible twos" with an absolutely angelic child. But when my little one turned three, things changed! Whew, it was exhausting and trying, but now she's back to her normal sweet self, YAY! My "newborns" are now a year and half, and life is getting a little calmer. So here I am ready to share some of our experiences and hopefully keep up with this blog a little better!

On another note, a lot of my free time has been spent on Pinterest dreaming of Spring. Now that Spring is here things are starting to get busy again. I have gotten so many ideas from Pinterest it's hard to keep up with them, but that's why there is Pinterest so you can pin everything to remind yourself :) I have a huge list of things to do. My sofa and loveseat are over 10 years old and are starting to show their age, which means I can either replace them (not going to happen), or I can cover them. I want everything to look fresh and clean and I can't find anything that will fit my couches exactly so I have decided to make my own slipcovers.  I have never taken on such a daunting sewing project, so it will be an interesting undertaking. But that is a project for a later date because right now I have yard work to do!

Homemade Trick or Treat Bags

OK so I made some trick or treat bags for the kids. Each child has a bag that matches his or her costume. I decided to do this a little old school because I don't have any kind of machine that cuts things out for me :( But they were really easy to make and only took about 1 hour for all three. I went online and searched images for a pumpkin (for Cinderella), scottish terrier (for Dorothy), and a can of spinach (for Popeye). I printed them out, cut them out and pinned them to my fabric. The next step was to sew and presto! Cute trick or treat bags. I'm so excited! I didn't take pictures along the way, but I found a tutorial online to share how I did them found here. I did mine differently from hers, but the concept is the same and it's still easy peasy!

I hope you make some for your little ones. They really are a quick project and your little ones will LOVE them! Mine said "Oooh Mommy, I love it!" I'm not kidding! It made my day!

 

 

Baby Dorothy Costume

So this year I decided to make my kiddos Halloween costumes. While I was going through bins of clothes from my oldest to pass down to my youngest I found a pair of red shoes that she could fit now which made me immediately think Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Lucky for me I had some blue and white checked fabric from yet another unfinished project from this summer :) It was perfect for my little Dorothy. Also now Kohls has little Toto dogs which is PERFECT! So here's what I decided to do:

I figured the best bet for a little one is to make the costume in three pieces. I bought a long sleeved turtleneck onesie and sewed the "apron" directly to that, made the skirt seperate, and a belt to cover the elastic of the skirt to make it look more cohesive. I also wanted to do this in pieces because the skirt can be used as a regular skirt after Halloween. I didn't do any measurements for the straps or the center piece of the apron. I just cut the fabric and folded it until the proportions looked right, and I did the same thing for the center piece.

 

Again I didn't measure my belt I just figured out how wide I wanted it by placing fabric on the onesie then quadrupled that number to get my finished width. For example if the finished width is going to be 2 inches then you want to cut your fabric 8 inches wide. I made the belt the same way I made the straps for my carseat canopy HERE. As far as the length of the belt I just measured around my little one and doubled that number, but I think if I were to do it again I would go 2.5 times bigger.

 

For the skirt I used this tutorial and it was so easy, I will definately be making more of these! At the bottom of the skirt I added trim to make it a little cuter and it really did make a difference.

 

For the finishing touch I made a little bow from sparkly fabric and attached it to a headband which  really makes this outfit pop! My little one doesn't really have any hair so this bow is darling!

 

 

Here's the finished product:

 

Here's a close up:

 

 

As most babies are at this age, she was wiggly so the skirt shifted, but I do need to cut the elastic a little because it's just a little too big even for growing into.

 

This costume did not take much time at all and it is ADORABLE! I love it.

 

Next...Popeye!

 

 

Apple



 

 

Laminated Activity Pages

Once again, it has been a while since I've posted anything. I've been keeping myself busy lately. This time of year when things are starting to cool down, I get sooo excited because autumn is my favorite time of year. Since I plan on cramming my calendar full of fall activities, it's time to get my house organized so that I don't feel depressed looking around at a cluttered house when I come home from a fun day of fall stuff. Anyway, more on that later...

I have a confession, many of you may not know this about me, but I am a celebrity grandma. My grandchildren's names are Milli, Geo, and Bot...you may know them better as Team Umizoomi :)
My little one LOVES Team Umizoomi! For her birthday, she wants a Team Umizoomi party, she has the Team Umizoomi dolls (which I purchased HERE), she wants to watch the show all the time, and wherever we go, Team Umizoomi follows, whether I see them or not. The other day I told my little one that Team Umizoomi had to go help other girls and boys, when I was told that Milli, Geo, and Bot are her children and need to stay with her. I suppose they are going to be with us for a while. So I decided it would be a good idea to go back on Nick Jr.'s site and see what kind of Team Umizoomi stuff I could find. They have a lot of stuff. Here are the links to what I printed out...Bot's Belly, Hidden Picture Pack, Puzzle Pack. I have also printed out a bunch of Peppa Pig stuff too. Sometimes I'm Mummy Pig, she's Peppa and my husband is Daddy Pig, her little brother is George and her little sister is Peppa too. Anyway, I printed everything out, well not really, there is a lot more on their site, but I had to cool it because I printed out a lot of coloring pages and stuff from Disney Jr. too. After all of the printing, I decided to start laminating some of the stuff so it can be used over and over again. Here is a sampling:

 

And there is plenty more where that came from :)

 

I also found something that I thought was kind of cool. It's called "Counting the House" I found it here. So what you do is give this to your little one and have him or her go around the house and find and count all of the items on the page. I think it's a fun way to get little ones to grasp quantity and counting, so it also got laminated.

 



 

So anyway, that is a little of what I've been up to lately, but there is more to come.

 

Apple